Lewis in driving seat after battling through adversity

Lewis Hamilton set out on Monday on one of the most contented journeys of his life —

a road trip around Australia — but he was not forgetting where he started.

The British prodigy embarked on the tour with fellow rookie Adrian Sutil, still buzzing from the extraordinary third-place finish on his Formula One debut in Melbourne 24 hours earlier.

"My dream is to win and to become world champion," said the 22-year-old. "That’s my target, whether it takes me two or three or four years. It’s my goal."

Vodafone, his McLaren team’s title sponsors, are already in advanced talks over a private deal which could ultimately make Hamilton one of sport’s highest earners, on a par with Tiger Woods and David Beckham.

His clean-cut looks, talent and eloquence are a marketing man’s dream. The fact he is black should — as he admits — attract a new constituency to motor racing and garner personal financial reward.

But there is little danger that he will forsake his roots. He only need think of younger brother Nicolas, who has cerebral palsy, to put his achievements into perspective. The two spoke on the phone moments after Sunday’s historic race.

Lewis said: "I’m seven years older than Nicolas, but he’s my best friend and we talk all the time. If things don’t go well, I think of him. He is doing well in life and he’s the one who will make sure my feet don’t leave the ground."

Indeed, the Hamilton brothers’ determination can be traced back to their paternal grandfather, who took the life-changing decision to leave Grenada for Britain in the 1950s.

It was the same strength of character which led Lewis’s father, Anthony, to stay on the straight and narrow when friends were turning to crime.

He took up a job as a British Rail clerk and then sought to better himself by studying at night school before establishing his own blossoming IT consultancy in London, which he is in the process of selling.

But when Lewis Carl Hamilton — named after American sprint

legend Carl Lewis — was born in the Hertfordshire town of Tewin, in January 1985, his dad’s business plans lay in the future.

The family, including his mother Carmen, who is now remarried, were far from flush. Lewis was bullied at infant school. "I was about five," he remembers. "It was horrible but I told my dad I wanted to start karate so I could protect myself. The bullying stopped and, more importantly, I got real self-confidence."

Lewis’s love affair with racing started on the balcony of his father’s flat in Stevenage, where he slept over at weekends. He started playing on remote-controlled cars. At six, he was beating grown-ups, became a national champion and appeared on Blue Peter.

His interest in karts was born on holiday in Spain. He showed immediate talent and, on returning to England, pursued his new-found passion. Nothing, including a bloodied nose, could stop him.

His first race came at the Hoddesdon track in Hertfordshire, aged eight. Martin Hines, who owns Zip Kart, remembers the "little black driver with that lovely smile".

"You can see the kids who are

different and he was one, along with Gary Paffett, who’s now a test driver with McLaren," added Hines, who signed the two youngsters. "Lewis ticked all the boxes. His family were so supportive.

"You have to wear black plates for your first six races and start at the back. I remember him cutting his way through the field. You could see he was special."

So, too, could McLaren boss Ron Dennis.

Hamilton, who was nine when he met Dennis at an awards ceremony in 1994, said: "We couldn’t afford a suit, so I’d borrowed a dark green silky suit off this guy who had won the karting championship the year before. I even got his shoes.

"I went up to Ron and told him I wanted to drive for McLaren and become world champion. He wrote in my autograph book, 'Try me in nine years'. But two or three years later he called me."

Dennis helped fund Hamilton’s career from that point. It was a relief to his dad, who had been forced to put up "For Sale" signs on houses at £15 a go to support his boy’s kart career. At first Hamilton, whose hero was Ayrton Senna, was reluctant to tell his friends about his exploits on the track.

He said: "Kids at school would say, 'What you doing this weekend?' and I’d say, 'Oh, I’m going karting'. They’d say, 'I might see you up the road then' — at the local karting track. I would just nod because I wanted to keep the extent of my racing quiet. It helped make school feel like an escape if no one knew what I was achieving in racing.

"School was my time to mess about and have a kid’s life — to be normal. But at weekends I never had a chance to go to any of those Under 18 clubs or parties. And that affects you because your friendships are not so strong.

"When you say, 'I can’t go out because I’m racing this weekend', your friends think you’re blowing them out. Even when I’d tell people at school I was going to Japan for a week to race, they’d look at me blankly. It just didn’t click."

Hamilton is now at ease with himself, happy spending time listening to his favourite music — R&B, reggae, hip-hop and funky house — and relaxing with his girlfriend, college sweetheart Jodia Ma.

His father, who lives with Lewis’s step-mother Linda, was in Melbourne on Sunday watching on proudly. "F1 had better watch out," he warned. He was echoing every dispassionate paddock expert.